This one is always big in the news: the use of depleted Uranium weapons on the battlefield.
The problem is that there's a hell of a lot of ignorance, misinformation, and outright lies involved.

• Those for tend to just out-right LIE and claim it’s completely totally safe and all long term medical studies show that to be true, they say you can even eat the stuff and it won’t hurt you.
  -They are very evil people for saying this, like the smoking companies x12. All heavy metals are very bad for you health if ingested, being radioactive makes it worse.
  
  Those against tend to focus on the effect it has on the battlefield; the fact that uranium penetration rods ‘self sharpen’ when they hit hard tank armour and then explode into flame when they break through, roasting the tank crew…
  -That’s completely irrelevant offcourse, all weapons work in nasty ways if you’re unlucky enough to get hit by them. These people are stupid.
  The facts as I know them:
  From the reading I’ve done, I gather that the main danger from depleted uranium on the battlefield seems to be from the small particles (dust) left behind from shattered ammunition. This dust can very easily find its way into humans, plants and animals. Heavy metals accumulate in the brain and organs (they’re not excreted), to which they cause harm and can contribute to death through failure of those organs.
  - Heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and mercury are well known for this.
  Depleted uranium isn’t as radioactive as that used in missiles and reactors. The 235 and 238 isotopes are all removed, so what’s left doesn’t give off much in the way of x-rays or gamma rays from any distance.
  *The trouble is though, that if you get tiny particles in your body, they are still radioactive and apparently dose all the cells they come in contact with the equivalent of a hospital x-ray scan’s worth of radiation every few seconds.
  With a half life of a couple of billion years you’ll keep getting your cells dosed at a constant rate for the rest of your life, however long that is…
  -The danger there is cancer. Even one hospital x-ray scan increases your risk. Imagine how much that risk increases when you have the equivalent of thousands of scans every few seconds to millions of individual cells?
  And if cancer doesn’t get you, your organs will probably start failing anyway.
  Not to mention the trouble with inherited genetic mutation: babies born without legs maybe?
  
  The Uranium dust volume after a lot of ammunition has been used is pretty large. This will just blow around forever after the battle... well, until it gathers in nooks and crannies, kidneys and lymph glands. The heavy bullets will slowly sink down to the watertable and break down in the ground water supply.
  
  Wars are fleeting, momentary things. But causing excessive, unneeded damage that continues for generations is nothing short of a war crime.
  You’ve got a material that’s only used because it’s marginally more effective against armoured targets and it’s cheaper to produce than the main alternative: tungsten. Is it worth it when you harm your own troops and poison land and whole populations for generations?
  
  (I’m not pointing fingers here. The US uses a lot of DU, but so does the Russian Federation and many other countries)

There are some studies that suggest that Gulf War Syndrome and the high number of birth defects from those living in that region AND the soldiers who fought there could have been caused by DU.

If it's true, why would the government not initiate a study and find out? Or did they and did they find out it wasn't a problem? I don't know.

I could theorize that the military industrial complex wouldn't want to lose a very effective weapon and that our government wouldn't want to lose our "edge" against our enemies - but I'm not military so I have no idea.

Well if you take the lawsuits against the smoking industry as an example of the covering up of studies, misinformation, and vested interests, I'd say the reason governments don't initiate inquiries is pretty clear.

It's not just about losing a slightly cheaper, marginally better weapon, it's about credibility and how much they will have to pay out to the victims.

It's always surprising to me how little countries care about and regard their soldiers and other service people. That tends to be pretty universal. If they're not testing nuclear, chemical and biological agents on them, they’re exposing them to one sort of dangerous chemical or another, fobbing them of with substandard equipment, poor training, etc.
That any country would knowingly expose their troops to the danger of DU if they knew it was toxic shouldn't come as any sort of surprise.

War is bad for your health too ;)

Volte6
War is bad for your health too ;)

Your MOM'S bad for your health.

Oh. Burrrrned.

No, but seriously, I think it's safe to say that we shouldn't be using depleted uranium for anything, much less something as human-contact-intensive as war. I mean, if you make something that will eventually kill people on your side, just to cut corners, then that's a pretty stupid weapon, isn't it? Like suicide bombing, only more gradual and painful. (And involuntary, of course.)

The main problem here is, I think, that some people in Washington may see soldiers as things that you fight with, like those little green army men that you get in big plastic tubs at the dollar store, and not as people. The solution to this problem I haven't totally worked out yet, but I will elaborate further on it later. Suffice to say that I've tentatively titled it "Operation Get To Know Every Single Person In The U.S. Armed Forces So That You'd Actually Feel Bad If They Died".

~IJ

There are proper handling and exposure measures that can/should/are imposed, but other than that, I don't see any problem with it personally.

There are plenty of rules regarding range as far as I understand it... for the safety of Soldiers maybe they should only be used when targetting tanks etc. a few miles off... as well as providing some form of adequate protection for those firing the weapon. Other than that... why not use it?

Of course the safety and quality of life of our own soldiers is rarely a priority anyways, right? This is the least of the issues IMO.

Volte6
There are proper handling and exposure measures that can/should/are imposed, but other than that, I don't see any problem with it personally.

There are plenty of rules regarding range as far as I understand it... for the safety of Soldiers maybe they should only be used when targetting tanks etc. a few miles off... as well as providing some form of adequate protection for those firing the weapon. Other than that... why not use it?

Of course the safety and quality of life of our own soldiers is rarely a priority anyways, right? This is the least of the issues IMO.

The problem here is that the negative effects I’m talking about don’t really concern the actual firing of the weapons. Where you run into trouble is after you’ve used it.
You don’t just fire weapons on a battleground and go away, like in a computer game. Often you will later move into that area and hold that ground. Meanwhile the area is poisoned by radioactive heavy metal dust...
And the trouble is that it will not only hurt your troops, it’ll damage the civilian population and the environment from then on. For decades.
-The fine dust form means that it spreads far and wide, well outside of the area it was originally deployed.

And we’re not just talking about war here. Use of DU has been completely banned and prohibited in many training grounds and firing ranges due to concerns over its danger.
In fact, about 250km from me there is a military training area where the use of DU ammunition has been prohibited, -after many years of using it there.

No, the military command and governments don’t care about the welfare of individual soldiers, but the individuals in the military do care, and so do individuals outside of the military. For that matter, the civilian populations who’re affected by this stuff after the war has passed (as it always does), care even more about what happens to themselves because of it.
And the effect on these populations is where “War crimes” come into the equation.

The problem here is that the negative effects I’m talking about don’t really concern the actual firing of the weapons. Where you run into trouble is after you’ve used it.
You don’t just fire weapons on a battleground and go away, like in a computer game. Often you will later move into that area and hold that ground. Meanwhile the area is poisoned by radioactive heavy metal dust...

Depleted Uranium has specific applications... You aren't going to see an assault on a town using DU rounds... and as far as I know the dust doesn't stick around more than a few weeks, and the dust doesn't scatter more than a few miles... and god knows the potency of danger of anything spread out that thin.

Meh, maybe somebody can dig up a real study if they read this thread.

Completely wrong. Think about chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons before you continue under this misapprehension.
Killing and maiming during war is not the subject. It’s knowingly putting your own troops in danger as well as endangering the civilian population long after the war.

Mikez makes a great point. Volte6, you are incorrect, the dust doesn’t disappear. It has been found to last for may years. Where do you think it goes? If it does disappear it’s absorbed into the plants and animals and that goes to humans. Solid rounds break down in the water table. It persists.
You may not indiscriminately fire DU penetrator rods constantly from your tanks over and over, but you do fire all the other weapons with DU ammunition that way: Usually autocannons, heavy machineguns, and rotary cannons with extreme rates of fire. These guns pump out millions of DU rounds over the course of a battle or training session.

I'm for returning to swords and shields and make all forms of projectile weapons out of bounds in combat.

Sadly some people are trying to deny the half life of uranium? Did you even go to college? Regardless of wether it will spread very far I don't know, I didn't study about the rate that dust travels.
What I can contribute to this debate is that we should not be arguing.
Wether you are pro uranium weaponry or against uranium weaponry, the weapons are going to be used regardless and all of our chances of getting cancer increase. Damn I give up smoking for nothing.
You have no chance to survive make your time.

I guess when it comes to the Us, they can do no wrong........

Rules of war? Accountability?

Let me provide a hint...

Ever see two democracies fight each other?

If you do, let me know, so I can build a palace of ice in hell.

NOT THE URAINIUM! TAKE THE ZINC OR COPPER, BUT NOT THE URAINIUM! by the way whats urainum used for? because if we need it i will agree with what ever it is used for, as long as its important.

Thevampire_kain01
by the way whats urainum used for? because if we need it i will agree with what ever it is used for, as long as its important.

It's a heavy metal. Literally. ^_^
For the same volume of material you have a lot more weight because it's so dense. That means it hits a lot harder when it's thrown at a target than a lighter metal like lead. The two additional properties are that it stays sharp when it hits, and when it punches through it explodes into a fiery cloud and burns...

But one of the main reasons it's really used is because it's cheap and plentiful. It's made out of all the Uranium left over from the atomic weapons and nuclear power industry. The tiny proportion that's useful is taken out and the rest is worthless crap... So some smart cookie worked out you can make money from it by selling it for ammunition, for armour against uranium ammunition, and for counterweights in aeroplane wings... It's just a replacement for lead, tungsten and other metals.

People arguing the rules of war thing are being dim in the head... :roll:
So we've all forgotten about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons eh? Of course you can have rules in war! People now are just being a lot more sneaky and nihilistic. Civilian casualties during wartime were far, far greater both in real numbers and relative numbers in the 20th C than in anytime in history. Wars don't get safer or smarter, people just get stupider; so that they either believe the safe/smart war bullshit, or they imagine there have never been rules and the use of any weapon is ok.

mike z.
War needs more taboo. The greatest weapon of all is accountability.

That's what I vote for.
Plus Madscott's idea. It might be funny, but there's many a precedent for ritualised problem solving. The history of duelling is as old as civilisation.
In the meantime, reckless harm to civilians is avoidable and so it should be avoided. :wink:

The ship i was on nthe Navy used DU for it's CWIS anti missle systems.(big assed gatlun gun thing.. 1000 rounds a min)

near the end of my stint.. they were switching out to a different ammo.

I was good friends with the Gunners mate who was incahrge of the systems, on the ship. His previous duty was at a ammo deopt full of the stuff. For some reason he and his wife had lots of trouble trying to have a second child after his posting at the ammo depot...

just my 2 cents.